Majority Chief Whip Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak has accused the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) of undermining President John Mahama’s quest to end the erratic power situation [dumsor] which has bedeviled the country for the past four years.
Consumers have expressed unhappiness about recent overbilling by the state power distributor.
Speaking on the floor of parliament Tuesday May 24, the Member of Parliament for Asawase said: “Reports suggest that in several cases, the cost of consumption has more than doubled and this has imposed undue hardship on virtually all Ghanaians, especially on the ordinary masses”.
“It has come to my notice that where some individuals have complained to ECG, the errors in their billing were corrected and the problems were somehow resolved, but for the majority of consumers, the overbilling still persists. …It has come to my notice that the overall effect of this is that the effort of President John Dramani Mahama to permanently solve the long-standing power crisis is severely being undermined and the crisis in the supply of electricity is being deepened”, he added.
The Asawase legislator said errors in the billing of the newly installed pre-paid meters; administrative lapses due to poor supervision of technical officers and their superiors; deliberate efforts by some unscrupulous ECG officials to take advantage of the new billing arrangement for personal gains; and over estimation of bills by consumers on postpaid meters, have all conspired to culminate in the current billing anomaly.
ECG, he recommended, “should take the immediate steps to correct the technical errors that are associated with the meters [and the] Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) should work with ECG to review the fault and restore the life line state for the underprivileged”.
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